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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26336053">Breathing in the Dark</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot'>howevernot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>eternity is also full of eyes [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dark (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Hopeful Ending, Illnesses, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Tenderness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:48:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26336053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah invited him to move into the hut with them once, early on, when he and Elisabeth had just completed it. Jonas had turned him down without even considering it. If it had not been the end of all things — if they had been back in his own time — he would have demurred, like he had seen his mother do so many times. He would have thanked Noah for the invitation while insisting he could never impose on their lives in such a way, and then, like his mother, he would have let Noah convince him it was no great imposition after all. But these were the end days.</p><p>But some nights he ached with his own isolation. Sometimes, when he shared the occasional meal with Noah and Elisabeth, he would see them with their knees tucked together, signing to each other, or sitting without conversation as Noah rubbed her back absent mindedly, and he would ache.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elisabeth Doppler &amp; Jonas Kahnwald, Elisabeth Doppler &amp; Noah | Hanno Tauber, Jonas Kahnwald/Noah | Hanno Tauber</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>eternity is also full of eyes [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Breathing in the Dark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to my dear friend Vero and my favorite hermit Sage for listening to be bitch and moan about this the whole time I was writing it.</p><p>Also this is unbetaed and all mistakes are my own.</p><p>As ever, I do not own any of these characters.</p><p>For a more detailed list of possible triggers, please refer to the end notes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Noah invited him to move into the hut with them once, early on, when he and Elisabeth had just completed it. Jonas had turned him down without even considering it. If it had not been the end of all things — if they had been back in his own time — he would have demurred, like he had seen his mother do so many times. He would have thanked Noah for the invitation while insisting he could never impose on their lives in such a way, and then, like his mother, he would have let Noah convince him it was no great imposition after all. But these were the end days.</p><p>But some nights he ached with his own isolation. Sometimes, when he shared the occasional meal with Noah and Elisabeth, he would see them with their knees tucked together, signing to each other, or sitting without conversation as Noah rubbed her back absent mindedly, and he would ache. </p><p>He ached too because Elisabeth reminded him of his mother, his father, Marta, his friends, and all the violent grief he carried inside himself for a whole world that did not exist anymore, but also existed just outside of his reach. </p><p>So, he turned down Noah’s invitation and avoided them both as best he could. He spent his time with Claudia working on the god particle or scavenging or sleeping in the bunker he had outfitted to be his new home.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>He was out on a raid, by himself, with only a .22 rifle that Claudia had scrounged from somewhere. He did not really know how to use it, even if he did, bullets were fast becoming more precious than gold. Not that gold was so rare anymore. He could walk into any house he wanted and pick gold jewelry off the abandon dresser of some dead woman.<p>He had stopped by the hut that morning, to check if they needed anything, and Elisabeth had warned him of increasingly dangerous raiders in Winden. But Jonas had been growing more reckless with his safety since Noah rescued him from hanging. He had shrugged off her warnings. What should he care if he was in danger when he could not even die?</p><p>He was in the house of his French teacher, going by the photos still on the bedside table, stuffing clothes into his bag — he might not have been able to talk to or even look at Elisabeth but he could see that she had grown out of all of her clothes again; if nothing else, he could bring her something that fit better. The sound of a footstep behind him startled him but he was slow, still not used to the fight or be killed world that he was living in. He did not get the rifle up in time. The other man held out his hands and Jonas scrambled up from his knees with the rifle out. The other man had his hands out in surrender.</p><p>“Mr. Sauter?” It was his French teacher, unwashed, with unfamiliar facial hair but the same man.</p><p>“Jonas, what are you doing here?” Mr. Sauter asked, lowering his hands. Jonas let his rifle slip down. He tried to remember what Noah told him about holding the gun at low ready. <i>Not so low it’s useless but not so high it’s going to block your view.</i></p><p>“I uh, we need new clothes,” he answered lamely, not sure how to explain why he was rifling through the closet of his young daughter, who surely needed the clothes too.</p><p>Mr. Sauter gestured vaguely toward the closet. “Take what you need. Emma doesn’t need it anymore.”</p><p>Jonas stared at him.</p><p>“My daughter, Emma, she —” he could not finish.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he offered, turning to shove more clothes in his bag to avoid the other man’s eye. The other man shrugged.</p><p>He felt that he should ask the Mr. Sauter some questions, where was his wife? how had he survived? did he know any places to get gas? or bullets? or canned food? He should perhaps have offered to scavenge together, if nothing else he could have kept the other the unarmed Mr. Sauter safe. Instead, Jonas brushed past the him with a muttered thank you and hurried down the stairs.</p><p>“Be careful out there,” Mr. Sauter called after him.</p><p>“You too,” he called over his shoulder. </p><p>It was when he was on the street siphoning gas that he got shot. He and Claudia needed an extraordinary amount of gas to keep the equipment in the power plant running and he was not against ruining someone else’s day by taking their gas.</p><p>He was busy sucking gas when he heard a shout. At first, he thought someone had hit him hard with a bat, because all he felt was consuming pressure. Then, the warmth of blood started to pour down his arm and more than anything he felt fear. Someone shoved him and he landed in the muck spitting petrol. A kick landed on his side that left him gasping. He clawed at the wet concrete until he heard the car start up, leaving him gasping and laying in the rain.</p><p>It occurred to him that he had to stop the bleeding. With a strip from his own shirt he tied a tourniquet; it was only then pain burst through his arm. He doubled over trying to breathe through the sensation. He considered laying there in agony until someone found him, or until he bled out. The only other option was to trudge back to Noah and Elisabeth, who had clean bandages and, above all, a stock of painkillers. </p><p>He dragged himself to his feet. As he walked, he thought maybe he could find somewhere to lay down in the middle and Noah could find him and drag Jonas back to the hut himself. The effort of walking back himself seemed to enormous. Still, he did not relish the idea of Noah scraping him off the ground again. Nor did he want Elisabeth to see him at death’s door laying in the muck somewhere in the ruins of Winden. </p><p>When arrived at the doorstep, he could not knock for the shame he felt. Here he was bleeding, moments away from passing out, begging for their help, when he deserved nothing from them. He was tempted to go to the bunker, wrap his wounds in whatever he could find, and grit his teeth through the worst of the pain alone. He had done it the first time with no painkillers and only Noah to bandage him while he was unconscious. To this day, the scar on his leg ached and pulled and he had to work to hide his limp. </p><p>He was saved from knocking by Elisabeth, who came around from the back. Her eyes grew wide with alarm, as she took him in, leaning on the doorjamb, holding his arm, sweating from pain. She reached for his arm, the one not covered in blood making him flinched back. She recoiled at his flinch but still took his arm and led him inside. He was shaking uncontrollably by the time she pushed him into one of their salvaged chairs. </p><p>Without a word, she pulled out their army issue first aid kit, which had been handed out in the first weeks after everything went to pieces. She laid out clean gauze, iodine, and a booklet with instructions on how to treat various kinds of wounds. She was sloppy at cleaning the wound, her hands shaking and too gentle. But the bandages were tights enough and after a few minutes they got to bleeding to stop. He still wished Noah were there; he would not have cringed away from this wound the way Elisabeth did. <i>But why shouldn’t she cringe away?</i> he thought. She was from the same time he was, where if she saw someone with a gunshot wound, she would just call emergency services and go home congratulating herself on a job well done.</p><p>He had his face turned away, biting his lip as she put pressure on the wound, so it was only when he looked back that he saw she was crying as she worked. She was so young still and should not have been wrapping Jonas’s fucking gunshot wound. She should have watching a dumb TV show or playing with friends at this moment, anything other than this. She was still growing for god’s sake. He did not want her to carry the blood, the fear or the grief of this life. </p><p>He understood Noah for a brilliant moment, as he looked at her blotchy face and red eyes. He felt deeply how unfair it was that she has to hurt at all. In that moment, he would have done anything to take the pain from her; he would do anything to let her be a child again. He would, like Noah, do anything he could to protect her.</p><p>Once he was bandaged, he wrote he an awkward left-handed note asking for painkillers. He perhaps should have asked for them to start with but it was a little hard to keep track of anything at all. He picked something at random out of the box she handed him and hoped for the best.</p><p>He picked the right because within the hour the pain did not bother him anymore. It was far away and meaningless. Elisabeth had to bodily drag him into their only bed, which was no more than a thin mattress on the floor, before he fell asleep at the table. The sheets were soft and smelled faintly of unwashed body and the soap they all used to wash their linens. It was somehow the most comforting thing he had smelled in months and he slipped quickly into sleep without even giving Elisabeth the new clothes he found for her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>He woke to Noah sitting beside him in a chair they had taken from Elisabeth’s own home, with a book in his lap.<p>Noah watched him for a moment as Jonas struggled to sit up, before taking pity and offering Jonas a hand which he used to leverage himself up into a sitting position. He felt wrung out. Noah gave him a bottle of water without comment, holding it steady as he drank.</p><p>“Here,” Noah handed him a bowl, “Eat.” He tried to feed Jonas himself but Jonas shook his head. </p><p>“Hold it for me,” Jonas told him. Noah held the bowl for him as Jonas used his uninjured arm to scoop out a few mouthfuls. He needed some dignity, even with Noah, who had seen him half dead and blue in the face. </p><p>“Sorry. I’m so sorry,” Jonas said after Noah set the bowl aside. He should have been finding a way to fix this for both of them, not eating their food and making Elisabeth cry. </p><p>“Shut up,” Noah said firmly. His gaze was piercing and made Jonas remember that worm he dissected in school once. He had cut the thing open lengthwise and pinned down the skin to poke at the organs. The tiny flayed worm had the girls in class tittering, even he had cringed in disgust. He had learned since them what it felt like to be so exposed. </p><p>“You scared Elisabeth,” Noah told him after setting the bowl on the floor.</p><p>“I’m sorry. I should have gone home.”</p><p>“No, you should have been more careful. She cares about you. You think she wants you to stay away? You’re the only thing left from her life before. She would cherish that connection, if you let her.” </p><p>Jonas could not defend the way he could not look at Elisabeth for the pain it caused him. He could not defend how he had not learned any sign language for want of distance from her. He never considered that she might want to be close to him.</p><p>He was too tired to tell Noah any of that though. He took another sip of water. Then muttered “I’m sorry,” again. Noah gave him a hard look that Jonas avoided by turning onto his good side, away from Noah. Maybe when he woke he would feel less guilty.</p><p>Before he drifted off, he felt Noah brush the sweaty hair from his face. The gesture made tears come unbidden. Who the last person to tuck his hair behind his ear? his mother? his father? Marta?</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>He stayed with them after that. Mostly because they had painkillers and he was useless at everything with only one arm.<p>Much to his humiliation, he found needed Noah’s help to so much as take a piss in the first days after he was shot. The day after, he tried to get up to help them cook but only managed to fall into the table, knocking over a chair in the process. He jostled his arm in the fall and by the time Noah helped him up again both he and Elisabeth were crying. </p><p>The day thereafter he managed to give Elisabeth her new clothes, which miraculously remained blood-free through the walk home. She had smiled with a look was so beatific that he could see for a moment the charisma that would make her a good cult leader in 30 years’ time. The connection faded when she held up an oversized sweater with gold stars and moons and grinned like it was Christmas day.</p><p>That night they all crammed onto the same mattress on the packed dirt floor much to his surprise. He was not sure what he expected, but it never occurred to him that they would share a bed during his convalescence. He thought maybe they had another bed or that he would sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. But Noah told him they did not even have an extra sleeping bag. Elisabeth told him that he was dumb to think they would make him sleep on the floor.</p><p>Elisabeth slept against the wall and Noah laid between them, pressed against the both. Jonas occupied the edge. </p><p>Touch had become fraught for Jonas. He craved closeness, coveted the moments his fingers brushed Noah’s as they passed supplies to each other, or when Claudia bumped shoulders with him as they walked to the power plant. But each touch overwhelmed him, he felt the burn of Noah’s fingers long after each touch had passed. Once, Elisabeth hugged him in thanks for bringing her canned peaches and it was such a terrible pleasure that he avoided her for weeks after.</p><p>But in the aftermath of being shot he was too exhausted to really care that he and Noah were pressed back to back all night long or how, early in the morning, Noah turned and threw a lazy arm over his waist.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>The drugged ease did not last long. One morning, he woke shivering and sweat drenched, as if he had just taken a turn around hut without a raincoat.<p>Elisabeth had fretted over him when he first woke as he turned down breakfast and came in out consciousness. </p><p>He woke later to find the hut empty. In a panic that he had been abandoned or that the other two had been kidnapped, he called out to them. No one came and he fell back asleep. The next time he woke it was to see the mattress a mile long and covered with little creatures crawling all over.</p><p>The next time he woke, he was on the back of Noah’s stolen scooter. He felt like he was back in the alps with Bartosz and Magnus skiing in the early morning. The rain felt like ice pelting his face as they raced down the slope too quickly. He was unsteady and felt that at any moment he might tip over into an snowy ravine. It was only the pain in his arm and solidity of Noah against him that reminded Jonas that he was in the future, not in the mountains. They had to stop more than once for Jonas to throw up.</p><p>When he next woke, he was laying in a cot, under a canvas roof surrounded by the sound of endless rain. He tried to get out bed, but found Noah, asleep on the ground next to his cot. The other man looked steady and solid against the ground, reassuring to see in the unfamiliar setting. He reached out to shake Noah.</p><p>“Noah, where are we?” he whispered.</p><p>“Military hospital. You almost died of infection.” Noah was speaking low and it was only then that Jonas became aware they were not alone. There were rows of beds lining each side of the tent, all occupied by still bodies. </p><p>Noah left to fetch him a nurse. Jonas studied all the still bodies. It was almost like he was the only one living in a room of dead bodies. There was a knot of nurses in one corner of the room, fussing over someone, but otherwise everything was still. Jonas remembered reading about men recovering in the hospital during the First World War and how there was a death room, where patients would go when they would never recover. The nurses would never tell the patients where they were going, only rolling them away to their deaths. He was sure for a moment that he was there, already in hell somehow, with all the other dead of the apocalypse. </p><p>The nurse who came back with Noah a few minutes looked at his wound, then rattled off a list of questions that Jonas did his best to answer. As she spoke, the person in the next bed over stirred. It suddenly occurred to him that it might be night time, and those he previously thought were dead, might have simply been asleep. </p><p>“You’re recovering well. You’re lucky to have such a good friend,” she told him as she left.</p><p>“Noah, if I die,” he started, once the nurse was out of earshot, still afraid he was in the dying room. </p><p>“You won’t die,” Noah interrupted. “I won’t let you.” His eyes were blazing with the conviction of only the most ardent believers. Jonas felt his stomach drop.</p><p>“You don’t know that,” Jonas countered weakly.</p><p>“I know myself,” Noah answered simply. Jonas wished he could claim the same. He felt he was stranger even to himself these days.</p><p>The hospital let him go with a bottle of antibiotics and strict order to rest a week later. Noah drove him back through the rain but there was no magic this time. He just felt unsteady and weak. He spent most of his time back in the hut sleeping and slowly learning sign language when he was awake. </p><p>By the time he was recovered, he had been with them almost two months. </p><p>In that time, they had wiped his brow, changed his bandages, and on several memorable occasions Noah rubbed his back while he threw up. Jonas had done nothing for them in this time. He could not help cook, sometimes he helped with laundry but he tired quickly. He could not go scavenging. For a time, he could barely wash himself. </p><p>On a rare clear morning, he made a break for it. He packed a bag with a few cans and his meager collection of clothes. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked out while Elisabeth and Noah were out. He made it ten paces away from the hut before Elisabeth grabbed his shoulder to stop him. He almost did not flinch at the contact. </p><p>She signed slowly, “I will miss you.”</p><p>He felt it in his chest, like she had sucked all the air out of the world. Who had ever missed Jonas? His father would not even stay for him even when he had begged. He never got the chance to learn if Magnus, Marta, and Bartosz would miss him; they were all dead.</p><p>He lied to her, “I will be back soon.”</p><p>She hugged him but let him leave without further comment.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>The bunker smelled of wet concrete and mold. His mattress was damp, his sheets stale. He had only the scant few cans he had packed as sustenance since Elisabeth and Noah brought all of his supplies to their hut for the duration of his recovery.<p>He went about restoring the life he had lived before being shot. He found more cans to stock the hut; he met with Claudia to do further testing on the god particle; he missed the sound of their breathing, the slight vocalizations that Elisabeth always made as she signed, and Noah’s arrogant smile or hard glare or the tender smile, which he gave to Elisabeth sometimes. He missed them. He missed eating with them. He missed the casual touches, which still burned, but which he now initiated sometimes.</p><p>He did not have a plan to go back. Until one day, while picking over a wrecked home near his old school, he found a futon. It was hidden in a box in an undamaged closet, wrapped in trash bags and completely untouched by the elements. It smelled of mothballs. He had looked at it and thought, <i>if I bring that back we’ll have more room to sleep.</i></p><p>He carried the futon to bunker on his shoulder. It was hardly the safest choice. The futon slowed him down significantly, making him a easy target for other scavengers or the wolves which had become more numerous in the woods around Winden since the global collapse of society.</p><p>But no one bothered him on the way home. So he tucked the futon in the corner and tried to forget about it. He forgot about it for days. It stayed in the corner of the room like a dying houseplant, weighing on his conscious, yet in need of only a moment of his time. </p><p>Finally, he could no longer stand the festering. He packed his bag back up, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and carried the futon on his shoulder to the hut.</p><p>“We can set it up in the corner,” he told them when revealed that no, he was not carrying a small deer, but rather another bed. If it was in the corner, they would be safe in the bubble they were clearly trying to build together. He could give them some of their life back, but selfishly, not all of it.</p><p>“It’s safer when we’re all together,” Noah argued. </p><p>“Are we? If someone shoots at us, we could easily all be injured if we’re in the same bed. If I sleep over there, then we stand a better chance of fighting against them.” </p><p>“Yes, but if you’re over there on your own someone could smother you without waking us, then shoot the rest of us once you’re dead. It’s better if we’re together.”</p><p>“If someone breaks in and smoothers me, I will make enough noise that you will wake up in time to shoot them.”</p><p>He and Noah carried on in their argument, getting so caught up that they did not even notice Elisabeth, who was already busy setting up the futon next to their own bed on the floor. </p><p>The smile Noah gave him when they realized what was happening was sharp enough to flay.</p><p>“I like it when we’re all together,” Elisabeth had told him and who was he to argue with her comfort.</p><p>That night, they ate rabbit together as Elisabeth taught them both signs for cooking. She had to make up signs sometimes because she did not know them all (why would a child know the words for water filtration or god particle?) but she knew how to talk about cooking. Her dad taught her, when he still bothered to be home.</p><p>Noah somehow managed to cook the rabbit he had caught that day into something greasy and filling. Jonas was always impressed at Noah’s handiness in the kitchen and complimented him accordingly. As they ate with gusto, Elisabeth taught them signs for cooking. Her father had taught her how to cook and how to speak about cooking, when he was still home that was. Noah had learned from the innkeeper in his town, he told them after Elisabeth had taught them how to say <i>pasta,</i> and <i>boil.</i>  Jonas was a useless cook. His mother had never had any talent at it and his father did most of the cooking in the house. When he had died, Jonas had been reduced to boiling pasta and heating up soup. It was not actually so different from now, in the apocalypse where Jonas just heated beans and cooked rice and left everything else to Noah. </p><p>After dinner, Elisabeth pulled out the last can of peaches Jonas had found for her. They did not bother to dirty another bowl, instead fishing the sweet slices out of the can with their forks. They dripped sugary syrup over each other’s fingers and the table. Noah and Elisabeth squabbled good naturedly over the last slice, though they all knew Elisabeth would get it hands down. Jonas watched them and wondered if this what a family was supposed to be like. He had seem the Nielsens squabble good naturedly, touch casually, and smile tenderly at each other. His own family memories were cold with the taint of his father’s death.</p><p>After the peaches were eaten, Jonas washed the dishes. It was an arduous task in the apocalypse. Without dish soap, they mostly scalded their dishes with boiling water and scrubbed. Sometimes they traded with the few other people who lived in Winden for lye soap or fresh soap that was sourced from the military or as of yet unscavenged warehouses and stores. These days there were few of those. When he was finally done with the exhausting task, he turned to see Noah and Elisabeth leaning close over the scared table, deep in conversation. He felt a pang of something unidentifiable in his chest at the sight. He turned from them and poured the dirty water outside. </p><p>He woke in middle of that night — gasping from a dream of his mother’s face splitting apart under the palm he had gently laid on her cheek. The blood on his hands had felt real, warm and sticky and <i>oh god, she’s going to bleed out.</i></p><p>Noah stirred at Jonas’s grasping and shifted against his side. Noah’s heat radiated through their shirts and kept Jonas from shivering. </p><p>“Go back to sleep,” Jonas whispered, feeling guilt that his own eternally plagued sleep was going to disturb the peaceful little bed these two had.</p><p>Instead of doing what he was told, Noah reached out to pull Jonas’s face towards his own. Jonas panicked. The only reason people got close to his face was to kiss him or, more recently, to headbutt him. </p><p>Noah did neither. He rested their foreheads together. His grip on the back of Jonas’s neck was strong and he closed his eyes as they press together. He did not smell great. Toothpaste was hard to come by so they made do with herbs and spices in the place of breath mints. Jonas hardly noticed the smell. He was frozen under the intimacy, under the enormity of this simple gesture. He felt Noah could hold him up for the rest of his life with just the hand on the back of his neck, could prevent Jonas from falling, from failing, from killing himself. Then, Noah’s hand slid from the back of his neck and he dropped away, asleep.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>So, he lived with them. He learned about gardening from Noah, though only in theory the constant rains prevented the growth of everything. He learned how to do laundry after the end of the world, also from Noah. He learned target shooting from Noah when they had bullets to spare. He learned how to make lye from someone on the other side of Winden.<p> Jonas suspected that if had Adam not sent Noah to them, he and Elisabeth would be dead. He and Elisabeth had no practical skills and Adam knew that. Jonas brought knowledge of time travel which was useless with the passage blocked, and an incomplete gymnasium education. Elisabeth brought her language, which was surprisingly useful when scavenging, but it did not help them learn how skin a deer. It was Noah keeping them alive. </p><p>It was Noah who insisted they build and smokehouse behind the hut, then show them how to do it. They found wood boards, bricks, sometimes they pulled nails out of the walls of abandon homes. They stole grill racks. When it was done, they finally had a way to preserve meat.</p><p>That was not to say that Elisabeth’s knowledge was useless. Jonas found that he loved learning sign language. The language was a rich vein of life that flowed between the three of them. He had come to appreciate the poetry of this new language, the way some signs mirrored the thing they represented, the pleasure of putting together a particularly elegant phrase. His mother once told him how beautiful she felt speaking French, though he had never understood, had always hated French in school. He understood now though, how a new language could feel like discovery, like reinventing yourself as you spoke</p><p>Jonas found he had things to offer them too, beyond interrupted sleep and physical labor.  He had to explain to Noah what radiation was more than once. The other man had never seen a radio before the future; everyone in his hometown had been too poor to own one. There were in-jokes and popular culture references that left Jonas and Elisabeth in stitches that Noah could never hope to understand.</p><p>They were all learning. Jonas learned how to look at Elisabeth while they spoke. He learned how to accept Noah’s stilted tenderness. He learned, perhaps, how to live a life.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>It was after one particularly successful scavenging trip that Jonas returned with three bottles of wine, enough cans to feed them for a week, and a box of undamaged razors for Noah, who liked to have a clean-shaven face, even at the end of the world.<p>Noah had patted him on the back with a gleam in his eye that Jonas wasn’t sure he trusted. </p><p>“Shall we save it? Or do you want to drink tonight?” he asked Jonas as he examined the bottles. He had found them in the cellar of someone who had clearly once been very rich. The room had been climate controlled once upon a time but most of the racks had collapsed and Jonas had only found three bottles still intact. He had wondered idly if the people who owned that wine were once friends with the Tiedemanns.<br/>
“Tonight. I cannot tell you how long I have been looking for something to drink,” Jonas told Noah. He felt a little like a husband bringing back the grocery shopping to his family in that moment. Like he and Noah were somehow parents to Elisabeth and discussing what to have for dinner after work. It was such a bizarre imagining that Jonas smiled uncontrollably at Noah. </p><p>They were going to eat smoked deer, which Elisabeth had killed the week before, with rice and canned tomatoes. Elisabeth had become a crack shot. The knowledge made him shudder, remembering the heart stopping moment after Elisabeth had shot the rope, in the future, and he had fallen to the earth choking and gasping for air.</p><p>As the rice was going on the hotplate, Jonas tried to get the cork out of the bottle. He was so excited to find wine he had not even remembered that they would need a way to open it. He ended up having to push the cork down into the bottle after a long struggle to pull it out. Noah was laughing at him, but refused to help.</p><p>“You found it; you open it,” was all Noah had to say as he watched on with mirth. Jonas downed a glass as consolation before they had even sat down to eat.</p><p>Once they were seated Jonas asked: “If you could wish for one thing in this moment what would it be?”</p><p>It was Elisabeth who answered. </p><p>“A world without Winden.”</p><p>Jonas raised a toast, looking her in the eye. </p><p>“To a world without Winden.”</p><p>Elisabeth took one sip and spluttered, her nose scrunching up in disgust. The look sent Noah off cackling; even Jonas felt himself grin at her. He remembered having the same reaction the first time he had wine too. </p><p>“That’s has to be bad,” she told them, which only made Noah laugh harder.</p><p>“No, it’s not vinegar. That’s just what it tastes like,” Jonas told her consolingly. </p><p>She turned up her nose but took another sip.</p><p>“What would you wish for Noah?” Jonas asked when he had recovered from his fit of mirth.</p><p>Noah face turned serious at the question. </p><p>“A world free from pain and suffering. A world where everything we have done is forgotten.” </p><p>Jonas looked away, unable to face the world Noah was hoping for, where suffering ends through annihilation of everything. He was familiar with that idea. That idea brought Jonas to try to hang himself, and then later, to shoot himself, and later still, to slit his wrists. </p><p>“The first time I got drunk,” Jonas started, hoping to distract Noah from talk of Adam and the passage tonight, “It was at a garden party when I was younger than you,” he gestured at Elisabeth. “I was too shy to play with anyone that night and Ulrich had been teasing me all night. He thought it would be funny to give me a bottle of beer. I hated the taste but I drank it all.” He wanted desperately to impress Ulrich he remembers, to make the adults stop teasing him.</p><p>“They thought you were even funnier for drinking it, I bet,” Noah said with a sharp lopsided smile.</p><p>“Yes, but they found it funniest when I got up to go the bathroom and smacked my head on the door. I bled all over my shirt and mom’s dress. She was so upset.” He did not relish the memory. She drove him home early from the party in a cold fury, before handing him off to his dad, who had helped him staunch the nose bleed and sent him off the bed. </p><p>“My sister dropped a pitcher of beer all over the floor the first time she got drunk and the innkeeper beat her until she cried,” Noah told them. He said things like that sometimes, about the casual cruelty he grew up with as if it was normal. His little story shook them all into silence. Jonas poured himself another glass.</p><p>Elisabeth tapped his shoulder after a few minutes without conversation to get his attention.</p><p>He nodded to her.</p><p>“Where did you get that scar?” </p><p>He was surprised when the question did not make him go cold. </p><p>“I was captured by a group once, a cult. I spoke out against them, so the leader punished me. She shot the rope before I died,” he told her. It did not feel like telling her about herself. In this moment, he could not conceive of the Elisabeth here before him ever becoming the Elisabeth he saw in the future.</p><p>“There is a cult here?” she asked, looking alarmed. “Now?”</p><p>“No, in the future,” he answered, gesturing towards her and the future.</p><p>That seemed to satisfy her.</p><p>The conversation moved on. Elisabeth stopped after only a glass but Jonas kept pouring out until everything felt bright and slippery. Noah’s smiles became a little easier, a flush rose on his face, and he sprawled uncharacteristically on the shitty garden chair that passed for one of their dinner chairs.  </p><p>“So,” Elisabeth announced as she pushed back from the table, “I’m going to sleep.”</p><p>She had just finished her stew and Jonas and Noah had been speaking aloud for the last few minutes, which Jonas had not even noticed until she started signing to them. </p><p>Noah laughed at her but wished her a good night. Jonas rubbed her shoulder awkwardly in sympathy as she passed.</p><p>“It happens to all of us,” he told her. She reached out to touch his cheek and he did not even flinch. That was until she slipped her fingers down to his scar. He tensed up and inhaled quickly, throwing a panicked look at Noah, who watched them with interest.</p><p>“I’m sorry this hurt you so much,” she told him simply. She walked away and pulled the curtain around the bed. Jonas had to swallow several times before he could compose himself.</p><p>“Does it still hurt?” Noah asked once he had calmed down.</p><p>“It pulls if I turn like this,” he demonstrated twisting his head to one side. “But its not like the gunshot wounds.”</p><p>“They hurt?” Noah frowned hard, like he was trying to understand something very complicated.</p><p>“Sometimes. The one in my leg never healed properly. They both ache when it rains.”</p><p>Noah poured him another glass.</p><p>The conversation had wandered to the god particle and whether or not to trust Claudia when Noah suddenly asked him, “You know my parents are both dead?” </p><p>“No. I had no idea.” </p><p>“I saw both of them die.” Noah looked far away as he spoke, like he might be watching his parents being lowered into the ground again. </p><p>“My father hung himself,” Jonas admitted. He had no idea if Noah knew that.</p><p>Noah snorted. “You always did have a sense of dramatic irony.”</p><p>“Fuck you,” Jonas said good naturedly. “It was from that same beam you found me on.”</p><p>“Really?” Noah asked.</p><p>“What?” </p><p>“Sometimes, I just can’t believe you.” Noah answered, but he looked fond.</p><p>Normally, Jonas would have been offended. Normally, he would have balked at the familiarity, a familiarity gained through knowledge of his older self, rather than through knowing Jonas here and now. But normally he was not drunk or sitting so close to Noah. Instead, he laughed and let the conversation moved on.</p><p>Noah was leaning towards him, hair hanging limply in his face. His cheeks were flushed, his knee was pressed to Jonas’s thigh. He was smiling as he told some stupid story about Agnes, local children in his hometown, a barn cat, and the local inn keeper and for once there was not threat of haughtiness in the look. Jonas gazed at him and he never loved anyone the way he loved Marta, but he thought maybe he did not need to. Maybe it was enough that Noah had been patching him up for years now. Maybe it was enough that Jonas looked out for food he knew Noah would like when he was out scavenging. Maybe it was enough that they cut each other’s hair. Maybe it was enough that once Jonas ran his fingers over Noah’s scalp and the other man had made a noise in the back of this throat that Jonas had thought about for days. </p><p>He knew the places they were both headed in the future. He knew the man Noah would become, the children he would kill. He knew even better the man Jonas himself would become and the children he would order to be killed. But looking at Noah’s flushed face in the dark he did not care that they might become those people. He only saw a friend who he would do anything for. </p><p>He leaned forward to kiss Noah, right as he was describing tying a bag to the cat before setting the distressed thing loose in the inn. Noah stiffened at first. If Jonas were a better person he would pull away, apologize, and maybe even leave the hut entirely. Instead, he pressed harder into the kiss and brought a hand up to cup Noah’s square jaw. Finally, Noah exhaled through his nose, and pulled Jonas closer with a hand on the back of his neck, firmly grounding him in place. </p><p>Noah pulled away first and Jonas held onto his face to keep him close. He was sure if Noah pulled away now, he would crumple. So he held on tight and admired the blue of his eyes. So much of their lives were focused on just surviving, on making it one more day, that he had never bothered to noticed the color of Noah’s eyes. Now that he was looking, he could not tear his gaze away.</p><p>But then Noah smiled. The sight made Jonas feel like the floor had been pulled from under him. Noah kissed Jonas again, just a chaste press of lips. </p><p>“There you are,” Noah said quietly when they pulled apart, “I’ve been waiting for you.”</p><p>Jonas flinched back hard. Noah and his fucking destiny and inevitable outcomes and all the things Jonas wanted to get as far away from as possible. </p><p>Noah reached for him but Jonas stood, scraping the chair against the packed dirt floor.</p><p>“Jonas,” Noah said softly. He had that look he got when he was talking Jonas down, half frustrated half desperate, a little condescending. There was something off about the look Jonas had always thought, until he realized that Noah always knew that every conversation would fall in his favor. Jonas would always be talked down to live another day. He had no choice. Noah was always going to win. Adam was proof of that.</p><p>Jonas could not bear to look at him a moment longer. Noah reached for his wrist again causing Jonas to jerk away. He was breathing hard, he felt wild and trapped and terrified.</p><p>He grabbed his raincoat without a word, then his backpack. He took one more look at Noah, who was standing in the middle of their mismatched little hut, lit by a single lamp, his face entirely in shadow.</p><p>He hurried to the bunker in the dark while drunk. It was stupid and he had tears in his eyes. If someone had come for him, he would not have been able to see them, much less defend himself. If a wolf came out of the woods he would not have heard it over his own harsh breathing. He had not even brought a pistol with him.</p><p>He did not even consider how stupid he had been until the next morning, as he laid in bed nursing a hangover, feeling sorry for himself.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>Elisabeth arrived one day, with a backpack, a rifle on her back, and a determined look at her face.<p>He thought about turning her away, about closing the door or pretending he was on his way out to meet Claudia. In the end, he let her in.</p><p>She set down the backpack. The sound of metal clinking together filled the bunker for a moment.</p><p>She did not speak at first, instead she walked around to look at the walls where he kept notes and photos, at the bed which he had not bothered to make, at the desk where he scribbled down observations about the god particle on the few days he came to the bunker to work.</p><p>“Are you happier here?” she asked at length.</p><p>“I thought you might want some privacy,” he answered. He was not going to outright lie. She always could sniff out his untruths anyway.</p><p>“I like when you are with us. We miss you. Were with us, you even brought a bed, and then one day you disappear. I thought you might be dead.” </p><p>She was speaking in simple sentences again, as if he might have forgotten sign language in the days he was gone. Shame burned in his throat at the thought. She told him once about family members who would learn sign language for visits with her, only to forget everything by the next visit.</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Did something happen? Noah said you needed space.”</p><p>“And what did you say?” he asked because he could imagine how that conversation went.</p><p>She gave him an amused look. “I said fuck that,” she answered. He laughed. </p><p>He did not offer anything else. She rolled her eyes and took initiative.</p><p>“I thought we would have dinner together,” she said gesturing to the bag.</p><p>He crouched to look in the bag.</p><p>“There’s more here than we can eat tonight,” he said to her from the floor.</p><p>“The rest is for you, to keep you fed until you come home.”</p><p>He swallowed at that. Until he came home. Not until he returned to the hut or until he came back, but until he came home. He let his hair fall over his face, to hide the tears welling in his eyes, and hands her a can of soup. He turned away entirely to fish out some pasta from his box of supplies. </p><p>She did not say anything as he wiped his eyes.</p><p>He did not think of Noah and how he might have been fucking ordered by Adam to seduce Jonas as they prepared. Instead he stirred noodles on his little camping burner while Elisabeth watched the soup on the hotplate, and thought how grateful he was to have a generous friend. A friend who did not spend time with him because he would be their savior in the future or because he was a fucking mess in need of someone to keep him alive, but because she cared. Because she liked him.</p><p>It was when he was spooning noodles into the soup, that Elisabeth finally asked, “What happened?”</p><p>He shrugged and handed her a bowl. She set it down on his desk before reaching for his face. She was still shorter than him, her growth stunted by lack of nutrients. Another casualty of the apocalypse. </p><p>She stared him down then asked again, “What happened?”</p><p>“I kissed him,” he admitted avoiding her eye. </p><p>Elisabeth was staring at him.</p><p>“And?” she prompted, bringing her fingers together impatiently.</p><p>He shrugged helplessly. How could he explain to her that he was upset that Noah only kissed him back because it was expected of him? That he was not even sure if Noah liked him or was just putting up with him because he had been ordered to.</p><p>She gave him a despairing look.</p><p>“Did he kiss you back?” she asked.</p><p>“He’s upset that you are gone,” she said instead of trying to make him talk about the kiss more.</p><p>“He told you that?”</p><p>She smiled. “No, but I know him,” she said feelingly.</p><p>“I don’t know if he even likes me. I think sometimes he just puts up with me.”</p><p>“Do you remember when you were sick last winter?”</p><p>He shrugged; the details were hazy. He had gotten some kind of flu last winter which had knocked had him out for weeks, leaving him hacking and struggling to breathe.</p><p>“You were shaking and woke up crying, but you wouldn’t let us help you. He sat with you and read to you all night to calm you down. The book was sad he told me, but he read to you all night, because you wouldn’t let us do anything else.”</p><p>He had been hoping he would die he remembered, which was part of why he would not let them help. But another part of him had been afraid of infecting them. He had a guarantee that he would not die, but he was not so sure about Noah and Elisabeth. He knew they exist in the future but maybe it was only his live that was secured by a thread to his future self. <i>What if they both died and I am left alone here?</i> he had thought as he shook with fever.</p><p>Her story made his throat close up. He hardly dared to hope that Noah cared for him outside of his survival. But this strange gentleness that he did not remember — Noah did not need to do that for him. Noah could have just stayed far away from Jonas until his illness passed. Jonas did not dare to hope.</p><p>Elisabeth let him sit with the story as they ate. After the dishes had been set aside, they passed news about places to scavenge back and forth. Then she told him that Noah had spotted a wolf to the north and they commiserated on their fear of the wolves.</p><p>When it was time for Elisabeth to leave though, she hesitated. He hesitated too. She was young still; she had been attacked more than once, and now there were wolves close at hand. She should not walk herself back to the shack alone. But escorting her in the dark was hardly better than letting her walk alone.</p><p>“Stay here tonight,” he said quickly.</p><p>She cocks her head.</p><p>“It’s not safe for either of us. I’ll walk you in the morning,” he promised.</p><p>She would have probably been ok by herself during the day, but Jonas knew about the kind of people who were out there by now. He knew about the man she killed after he tried to rape her when she was only nine. Jonas himself had to put up with older men who thought they can take him. Once he had even offered his mouth to someone for the gas in their tank. Noah had shot the man and untied Jonas’s hands before the deal had been consummated but he retained a healthy fear of those outside their little circle.</p><p>Which was why, when he heard a knock on the door as they were laying down to sleep, he grabbed his pistol.</p><p>The knock came again. Elisabeth looked at him in confusion. </p><p>“Someone’s knocking,” he said haphazardly, as well as he could with only his left hand.</p><p>She nodded, grabbing her own rifle and tucking herself by the stairs, ready to fire if somehow the knocker got in. Then, he heard Noah calling out through the steel door. </p><p>He gestured to Elisabeth to stand down before he dragged Noah through the door and slammed it shut again. They were pressed together on the doorstep, Noah’s raincoat dripping through Jonas’s threadbare shirt.</p><p>“You idiot,” he spit. “What were you thinking?”</p><p>“As if it’s any more dangerous than staying that hut alone at night,” Noah hissed back.</p><p>Elisabeth was looking at them expectantly.</p><p>“He’s an idiot,” Jonas signed to her emphatically.</p><p>She looked at Noah.</p><p>“I thought it was too dangerous to stay in the hut alone,” he said with a shrug, dripping water on the floor. “Remember the raiders a few days ago.”</p><p>Elisabeth nodded making Jonas’s stomach dropped. He should have been there. Whatever happened, he should have been there; he could have helped. He took Noah’s raincoat and watched as Noah and Elisabeth hugged.</p><p>“Have you already eaten?” Elisabeth asked; he nodded.</p><p>“You were going to bed?” he asked, eyeing their state of undress.</p><p>Jonas nodded. “I’ll take the sleeping bag and you can have the bed.”</p><p>They both nodded. Jonas turned to brush his teeth, with some tooth powder that Claudia had given them some months ago. When he turned to offer Noah the tooth powder, he found Elisabeth had already set up and slipped into the sleeping bag on the floor. </p><p>Jonas told himself there was no reason to feel dread at this. He and Noah shared a bed all the time, why should this be any different? Nothing had really changed between them. He had kissed Noah and it was a mistake. Simple as that. Besides, it was pointless to argue with Elisabeth once she had decided something was going to happen.  </p><p>He looked over at Noah who was watching Jonas the way he watched at Elisabeth sometimes, with a tender and sad kind of look. The kind of look someone might give a butterfly dying on the side of the road. Jonas passed him the toothbrush, before turning to find a dry shirt. Anything to stop seeing that look on his face.</p><p>“Let’s sleep.” Jonas signed to Noah.</p><p>Noah slipped out of his pants, sweater, gloves, and all the other layers he needed to protect himself from the hell their world had become. In just his undershirt and boxers, he looked vulnerable, reduced. Though his shoulders were still wide, his legs sturdy, his arms well defined. His hair glowed in the light of the lantern. Jonas had always liked to watch Noah, in all of his states. He moved with purpose. Where Jonas was quick to start shaking, Noah appeared almost entirely unflappable, steady. It was only in moments like these, when they were preparing for bed, or when they were washing, which they did by passing a cloth under layers of clothes, that Jonas saw his true measure. He was a living breathing man. Not an icon, or a concept or a puzzle piece to be moved around Adam’s chess board. </p><p>His body was so different from Jonas’s, who had grown tall and whipcord thin. Jonas’s shoulders were narrow and boney, all his ribs were visible. Sometimes he looked at his wrists and thought lifting something heavy would surely snap them. When he looked in the occasional mirror, he appeared gaunt and fragile, like the photos of prisoners of war he saw in his textbooks in a different life. He did not know how he could protect anyone with this fragile body.</p><p>Noah slipped in first to sleep by the wall. When Jonas first started living with them, he slept on the outside because he felt trapped to be on the inside. By now, he slept on the outside because he was the fastest out of the three of them to startle awake and reach of a gun when something was wrong. Noah slept in the middle because Elisabeth was most vulnerable, the least likely know that someone was coming for them and the slowest to react.</p><p>Jonas’s cot was entirely too small for two bodies, so Noah had to press uncomfortably close. The feeling of Noah’s humid breath on the back of neck made Jonas’s skin prickle. </p><p>Noah startled him when he shifted and whispered, “Are you alright?” </p><p>Jonas answered a little too loudly for the oppressive silence, “I’m ok.” His heart was racing.</p><p>Noah waited as Jonas breathed slowly. He was trying to remember the tips his therapist had given him a lifetime ago on how to breathe. If he got it right, he could reset his system – not that he ever knew that meant anyway. </p><p>“I know you think I am only acting on Adam’s behalf but neither Adam nor my older self told me what to do. I was only sent here. My older self told me he couldn’t tell me anything. To tell me anything would change the course of events as we know them. I only know I am supposed to be here, with you and Elisabeth. I don’t know more than that.”</p><p>His speech had not calmed Jonas any. He had given up on slow breathing, instead gripping the blanket for dear life.</p><p>“I should just believe that everything you do is not calculated to make me into Adam?” Jonas said, more breathless than he liked.</p><p>“Whatever I am doing right now will culminate in Adam anyway. If you leave and never speak to me again, you will be Adam. If you stay here, with us, you will be Adam. Why should I care about him when he is inevitable and you are here now?”</p><p>“I cannot have your faith,” Jonas whispered into the dark. He wanted to have that kind of confidence that Noah had but in his hope that he would not become Adam.</p><p>“Perhaps that is why I am here, to have faith for you,” Noah answered, with only the conviction of the best preachers. </p><p>“Faith that I will become a monster,” he replied bitterly. Yet, he did not run. He stayed ensconced in the warmth of their bodies. </p><p>“Faith that you will never give up trying to deliver us all from our suffering,” and when he put it like that it did not sound so bad.</p><p>“I’m not him. I won’t be him.”</p><p>He felt Noah shrug. </p><p>Jonas wanted to be the man Noah needed without Adam’s cruelty. He wanted to deliver them without ordering children killed, without killing Marta. He just wanted them all to live. And why would Noah care about Adam when Jonas was right there indeed? They were just fumbling about, trying to make it at the end of all things. Some mornings they shaved together; Noah teased him about how patchy his beard was when he grew it out. Noah read out loud to him when he was sick. He did not do these things with Adam. Jonas could not imagine Adam would let Noah be so gentle, so kind without consequence. Jonas made sure to get extra spam from the military outposts when he was on supply runs, because Noah liked it and would not listen to reason. He cut Noah’s hair, bandaged his wounds, and sometimes even wrapped an arm around his waist as they slept. He was not doing these things for Noah in the future. He had a Noah here in front of him, who wanted to care for Jonas.</p><p>Jonas reached out to find Noah’s shoulder, then his neck, then he pulled the other man forward. He bumped his forehead against Noah’s nose at first making Noah huff in amusement. Finally, he managed to press their foreheads together.</p><p>They did not kiss. It was too dark. </p><p>“I want to believe you,” he whispered.</p><p>He could hear Noah smiling when he answered, “Faith in anything takes time, Jonas.”</p><p>That was just the kind of infuriating response he was expecting from Noah. But the platitude did not sound quite so empty as some of the others. Jonas might never have faith again. But he could rely on Noah, and that was something like faith he supposed. </p><p>That morning, as they were headed to the rain water barrel, Jonas pressed Noah to the nearest tree and kissed him. It was as close as a declaration as he ever came these days.</p><p>It was nothing like kissing Marta. Noah’s jaw was stubbly and he bit too hard at Jonas’s lip. They were past gentleness. Gentleness was maybe the press of Noah’s ribcage against his own at night. This was a monstrous intimacy. He should not have expected anything else from Noah, who had shot people threatening Jonas and Elisabeth without a second’s thought or hesitation. What kind of gentleness could exist between them after Noah handed him a gun and let Jonas shoot himself in the head. There would never be easy cuddles or slow make outs by the lake for them.</p><p>It took a few minutes but eventually, Jonas pulled back. </p><p>“We need to get back,” he said. Noah just raised his eyebrows, blinking slowly at Jonas, not moving from where he was leaning against the tree. Jonas leaned forward to kiss him again, kissed him harder, because the arrogance in that look was infuriating and he could finally kiss the look off Noah’s face. He remembered those scant few weeks he spent in the past with Noah and Adam recovering from his injuries. Noah had seemed smug and frightening; Jonas would never have imagined they would be friends. But here he was, demanding more from a kiss with Noah, opening his mouth against Noah’s, feeling heat shoot through his belly when their tongues first touch.</p><p><i>There is no way this won’t end in disaster,</i> he thought as he tucked his head down to kiss along Noah’s throat. <i>This will ruin us,</i> he thought as he sucked a bruise into the skin he found there.</p><p>When Noah put his own mouth on Jonas’s throat, Jonas locked up, going rigid against Noah. The next thing he knew, he was gasping and Noah was standing some paces away with his hands out like Jonas was radioactive waste too dangerous to even touch.</p><p>Jonas could not breathe. He doubled over against the tree feeling like he was dying all over again. He did not know how long he stayed there, kneeling in the dirt. When he looked up, it was not Noah kneeling in front of him, but Elisabeth. He recoiled from her, for a moment seeing her scared face, one blind eye, and her short-cropped hair of the future.</p><p>Her face crumped in confusion; with shaky hands he told her, “You looked like someone else.”</p><p>“Are you ok?” she asked in return.</p><p>He shook his head. She would hang him in the future, she had already hung him in the future. He was proof that she would become the terrible thing he was trying to protect her from.</p><p>“Come home,” she told him. He was too exhausted to argue that he had no home, that none of them here had any home to speak of. He just let her pull him to his feet, let Noah drag him to the bunker to collect their things, and let them both escort him to the hut.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>The three of them did a terrible kind of dance for the next few days. They did not talk about Jonas’s panic as he knelt in the mud, nor do any of them acknowledge either kiss that passed between Noah and Jonas.<p>They were all trying not to rock the boat, which was fine with Jonas. </p><p>So, it was without a second thought that Jonas went out hunting with Elisabeth a few weeks after the incident at the bunker. </p><p>“Who did that?” she asked, as they walked.</p><p>Jonas reached up to his throat. He had thought before of what he would say if Elisabeth ever asked. She knew about time travel. She knew Jonas and Noah had traveled. She knew about Adam and the goals that he was working towards and the reasons why Jonas was fighting so hard against becoming that person. However, they had spared her the details. She was only 15 and Jonas kept hoping against hope he could shield her from how terrible their futures really were.</p><p>But she asked him and he was not in a habit of lying to her. He stopped in the middle of the woods, turning to her with a sigh.</p><p>“It was you. The you in the future,” he told her. He ached to tell her this, but it was also a heaviness he could no longer carry alone. He had told no one who had done this to him. No one had ever asked, no one but her.</p><p>She did not look alarmed, only thoughtful, maybe a bit sad.</p><p>“I did that?” she asked.</p><p>He nodded, glad he did not have to speak aloud to her.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because I defied you. I didn’t follow your rules,” he answered. </p><p>“But I saved you too?” she asked, and she had that look on her face like she was trying so hard to understand and coming up short.</p><p>“I guess you probably recognized me and knew I couldn’t die. Or you remembered my scar, maybe you remembered this moment and that’s why you hung me in the first place. I never asked,” he explained.</p><p>She reached out to him, pulling his head down to rest their foreheads together. It was moments like this where he could never imagine her killing anyone, much less hanging them for defiance. </p><p>When they pulled apart, she said, “I am sorry that I’ve hurt you.”</p><p>Jonas was raw and freshly scared for days now. Each night, he had been holding in his tears every time Noah had shifted against him. Elisabeth’s simple kindness brought him to tears.</p><p>“It wasn’t you,” he told her, then closed his eyes, trying to control the flood of emotion. When he looked at her again, she glassy eyed too, looking at him with empathy. It was that empathy, he knew, that would save his life someday.</p><p>They continued walking until finally he had to speak. He tapped her shoulder.</p><p>“I don’t know if I can be with Noah. So much stands between us,” he told her.</p><p>She walked on in silence for a moment.</p><p>“I really don’t want to be in the middle of this,” she told him. “I live with you and it’s weird when you put me in the middle of whatever is going on between you.” She looked determined and there was something unyielding in her look that he did not recognize.</p><p>“Sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”</p><p>They had a system when they hunted with Elisabeth. He and Noah acted as the ears, warning her of a deer’s approach. She took the first shot always. They would shoot after her, if the deer was not immediately incapacitated. It was not a perfect system. Sometimes Elisabeth banged the barrel against something without noticing. Often Jonas’s own damaged hearing failed him and he could not warn her of a coming deer until it was right in front of them. But they were still better as a team than apart.</p><p>It was not raining that day, the lake was calm and silent, and for once he could hear the birds, just at the edge of his hearing. He had been looking forward to the long hours of silent focus for days. Being away from Noah was good too. It freed up space in his head to think. He was on edge around Noah since their last kiss, like he was about to kiss him again at the barest provocation, or maybe cry, or worse yet, break down completely. Maybe he would find a way to sink his impending sense of disaster in the lake today and come back scoured clean of fear. </p><p>Elisabeth had brought a copy of Harry Potter with her, which she had taken from her own home early in the apocalypse. She spent three alternating between reading it and keeping watch. Mostly, Jonas just stared at the trees and practiced feeling empty. </p><p>After three hours of unbroken silence, Jonas heard something. He signaled to Elisabeth, who put the book down carefully and raised her rifle scanning the lake’s edge. A moment later, a doe came into view. Elisabeth watched her carefully as she approached the water, waiting to get the best shot. Jonas followed the doe in his own sights.</p><p>The silence was broken by a resounding crack. Elisabeth got the her in the neck. She only made a few steps before collapsing. Jonas smiled at Elisabeth and she grinned back with pride. There were so few things they could feel good about these days; Jonas was glad she could have pride in this thing. </p><p>The doe made a guttering sound as they approached. Her muzzle was smeared with gore and her eyes were like gems set into her face. They watched her for a few minutes, Jonas keeping his gun trained on the doe’s head in case she was still alive.</p><p>Once they were sure she was dead, they dragged her onto a bluff to field dress the body. It was not Jonas’s favorite thing to do, but the apocalypse had inured them all to the many horrors of staying alive. Elisabeth cut the doe open down the middle, since she was the only one of them that had never carelessly punctured an organ. Jonas did the rest, pulling out the organs, sawing through the ribcage. Jonas never dissected anything bigger than a frog in school. The frogs had been bloodless cold things that smelled of formaldehyde and were fun to play with. He never once wanted to hold the steaming organs of a deer in his hands, yet life required that he take the organs and dump them by the lake. Once he had scoured the chest and abdomen of all organs, he and Elisabeth propped the deer up against the nearest tree. It was a macabre sight, with her head lolling and her legs akimbo. Maybe it was this that had inspired Adam’s future taste for the grotesque. Jonas himself felt neither inspired nor overly horrified, though the blood on his boots did not bring him comfort.</p><p>In the hour they waited for the deer’s blood drained, they sat in the hut and talked and ate the beans and rice Noah had packed for them that morning. Then they rolled the doe onto the stretcher and carried her like that, like she was a wounded soldier, being carted off the battlefield, rather than their dinner for the next few months.</p><p>Noah was there when they got back, waiting with a knife and a meat hook ready. He gave Jonas the same excited grin that Elisabeth had given him. Jonas was sure he was giving the same grin back to Noah. They were all slowly adopting each other’s mannerisms. Jonas found he did not really mind. He liked the way it marked him out as a member of this little family. They all spoke like Elisabeth, moving their hands over the same paths as they signed with little variation. They all used Elisabeth’s made up signs, the ones she had to invent because why would she learn words like <i>field dress</i> in school. Noah and Elisabeth had nearly identical postures when shooting a rifle. He and Noah cocked their head in such a similar way that Claudia once told him that they could be siblings. People looked at them and thought family. When Jonas was not terrified of what that meant for their future, he was reassured that at least he belonged somewhere.</p><p>Jonas helped to hack off the legs and carefully, so carefully, skinned the deer with Noah. </p><p>“You know my father once spent months visiting an abattoir to painting the bodies,” he told Noah as he worked on cutting off the skin. Noah was on the other side of the deer, doing same.</p><p>“What were the paintings like?” Noah asked.</p><p>“They made me cry,” Jonas answered. </p><p>“I stopped crying after I watched my mother bleed out,” Noah told him making Jonas shudder with discomfort. </p><p>He did not help Noah remove the head, but he sat in the leaf litter and watched. Then they got to work rinsing the body of debris.</p><p>Once the body was clean and ready to butcher, Noah grabbed Jonas’s forearm. His hand was cold against Jonas’s cool skin, making goosebumps rise on Jonas’s arm.</p><p>“I will be here, Jonas, for the next 30 years. I can be patient,” Noah told him very quietly.</p><p>Jonas had nothing to say. The enormity of 30 years in this little family overwhelmed him. None of them had even been alive for 30 years. He nodded, pressed a brief kiss to Noah’s forehead and left to get the smokehouse ready.</p><p>That night, as they were sitting down to eat, Noah ran a hand over Jonas’s shoulder as he passed. Jonas leaned into the touch, and even found himself smiling up at Noah. </p><p>After dinner, Elisabeth ensconced herself in bed with the curtain pulled, claiming she wanted to read in peace. That left Jonas throwing furtive glances towards Noah, unsure of what to do or even say.</p><p>“Do you ever wonder what would happen if we didn’t kill that deer?” Jonas asked at length, still signing. He did not feel guilt about the deer but sometimes he wanted to.</p><p>“We would starve,” Noah answered simply.</p><p>“Would we?”</p><p>“We will die, Jonas. Someday. Somewhere we will be dead, and then we will be free.”</p><p>“Is that your freedom?” Jonas asked.</p><p>“I want out of this as badly as you. The things I’ve had to do, the things he’s asked of me. You think I don’t want to get out?” Noah did not look angry as he spoke. Instead, he looked exhausted. The bags under his eyes had only become more prominent in the last few years and he had gained wrinkles on his forehead and around his mouth at some point too. Jonas reached for Noah’s wrist.</p><p>“I will get us out. I promise,” Jonas said. He had to get them out. There was no other option. He could not let this be all Noah was. He could not let Elisabeth’s entire life be endless suffering in the service of nothing. He could not live with that.</p><p>“I know,” Noah answered. And that was good enough.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Triggers: as in the canon, Jonas is explicitly suicidal in this. Rape and survival sex are touched upon but not explored in any detail. A character does get shot and also recovers. An deer is shot and killed to eat, which is described in a fair amount of detail. There is also a pretty detailed description of field dressing the body of the deer and a less detailed description of butchering the body. </p><p>Thank you so very much for reading this! It was a pain to write. I am also on tumblr at howevernot.</p><p>Comments and kudos give me life!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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